Well if it was a 13 or 14th gen with DDR5 you could go with 48GB sticks (96gb total). which is what I ended up using in the route I went in my mITX NVMe server. But I am likely going to switch the case i used on since it doesnt have the best airflow for a modern CPU. which was another thing the FIRST version of the 45 Drive workstation had, chassis fans.
I found a competitor with 2u, 3u, and 4u Cases with chassis fans AND water cooling support in rack chassis. so I may use them for compute servers, and 45Drives for my storage servers. Wish this wasn’t the case, as I would love for matching faceplates as the rack is in the open.
I also been entertaining getting maybe 2x HL-15, and put drive bay from one, turn that into compute unit (have room for better cooling and long GPUS). then add removed drive cage into other HL-15 for JBOD build. I wish 45 Drives had a workstation that was built for real workloads, EATX/ECC boards, better cooling. BUT they cant just make 100 different versions for cost reasons. I dont blame them for playing it safe.
Wish they offered like Q30 and some other chassis on the page with case or case and PSU, or full build options. I know they been working on a 4 drive and 8 drive version, which they have on enterprise side. I am not sure what prevents them from copy pasting it onto the consumer side site though.
I wished the “workstation” was not using a mini-ITX case. Most "Workstations cases are towers laying horizontal.
For myself I never built a workstation (when I would build Linux desktops) using consumer grade motherboards. But then again the motherboard market has since since the 2000 to 2006 timeframe (when I last build a desktop or server for linux).
Received my Home Workstation! However, be prepared for a couple of issues.
Current setup card points to non-existent online guides. I’ve sent email in on this issue and it may be resolved soon.
The power supply fan is LOUD! It is a Silverstone FX500 and it appears there is a consensus that model of fan is a screamer. The Home Workstation is advertised as such
“ The Home workstation is designed to be quiet and compact while still offering a full PC experience. Its dual chamber design allows the Home Workstation a full-sized GPU slot. Other than CPU fan (and GPU fan if you choose), the home workstation does not require additional cooling, keeping noise low.”
I may end up returning this if there is not a solution as the noise is very intrusive and sent email on this same subject but have not heard back as of this writing.
So some people may not know this, but the Flex PSUs like the one in this case are LOUD. it has to do with small fans needing to spin faster and/or have much more aggressive fan blade pitch to make same air flow as a larger one. Its just nature of the beast. In the SFF (Small Form Factor) communities, a Noctua fan mod is the best way people handle this.
This is also why I recommended they look at doing a SFX Power supply in an above post, as I seen tons of complaints about the HL-15 noise levels.
I have to give huge kudos to 45HomeLab after I received a new unit, today, with a different power supply! In a word - QUIET!
After initially reporting, both in the forum and direct email, a power-supply fan noise issue with my original unit they quickly responded and told me their R&D team were looking at the problem.
They are now using a different power supply and it makes a huge difference. The only fan noise I hear, and it’s faint, is the CPU fan. There is no noise that I can discern coming from the power supply.
And, by the way, they shipped the new unit before I returned the original!
Big thank you to 45Drives and 45HomeLab for working with this early adopter and resolving the issue.